


Cat Feet

by lemonsharks



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Backstory, Bob (genre), Gen, Names, Pre-Game(s), Qunari Culture and Customs, Tal-Vashoth Culture and Customs, heritage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-05
Updated: 2016-05-05
Packaged: 2018-06-06 13:25:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6755860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemonsharks/pseuds/lemonsharks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her mother teaches Yazali Adaar to step lightly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cat Feet

_Light feet_ , her mother tells her, _cat feet_ ; they skirt the edge of a town, the air full with rain that isn’t ready yet and heavy with the smell of fresh grass and cattle. Her mother wears a wrapped headdress, even in the heat, and requires Yazali do the same. It keeps her broken-off horns covered and they’re far enough from Par Vollen now that not many men or elves have seen a real qunari.

 _Walk like there’s none of you at all_.

Yazali is five years old. Her brown hand nestled in her mother’s: bigger, grayer, and with the itchy little knobs beginning to push up from her skull under a dull cloth people who aren’t her mother can say she simply looks _odd_ now.

Some of the merchants spare her a second glance and call her an _ugly little elf, eh? Poor sad thing._ She gives them copper coins and tiny pouches of spice in exchange for bread, for roasted fish, that she brings back to where her mother’s waiting, tucked back in a secret place, hidden and hard to get to.

  


_Light feet_ , she whispers around the arrow clamped between her teeth. _Cat feet_.

She crouches on a crumbling ledge; pine sap drips onto the back of her neck and insects buzz and bite. Yazali remembers:

On the coast of Nevarra they meet a band of Tal-Vashoth. They’re hard and cold and they speak in rapid Qunlat, deserters; her mother bargains in that same tongue, words Yazali does not speak.

She gives her name, the life she had run from, and with narrowed eyes says, “Or call me Saar-raas. Raas-saar. I really can _not_ be called picky.”

One snorts, and mutters _nothing dangerous, dangerous nothing_ beneath his breath. He wears a half-grin on his face. The moment holds, and breaks. The other Tal-Vashoth laugh, but they circle around her mother and herself and shepherd them back to a camp. Her mother cleans and binds an injured man’s wounds. She leaves and returns, chin high and smiling. They break camp and go with the group in the morning.

Yazali is thirteen when she asks by firelight, “What does _my_ name mean?”

“Nothing. I just liked the sounds.”

It is her first time out with the men, and her mother worries. She takes the arrow and draws; the bowstring breaks and her target snaps his head in the direction of the sound; a spear sprouts from his back.

Yazali does not recall ever having seen so much blood, that this is the gurgling sound of dying with a hole on your lung.

  


_Light feet, cat feet_.

It fits that the teacher of the trick knows it, too.

The daggers are a better fit, with handles made of polished bone carved to rest just so against the shape of her fingers. They are a gift, the kind of gift that leaves her mother scowling, when she catches Asaara with his hard hands over hers, his breath warm in her ear while he teaches her the _right_ grip.

She doesn’t hear anyone coming until the clearing of her mother’s throat and the clatter of her daggers on the gravel at her feet.

Asaara starts calling her mother _Adaar_ that day. Saaraas Adaar, and Yazali takes up the name by extension. She holds it close and oils her blades and feels the weight of half-told stories on her tongue.

  


Saaraas still covers her head, still tries look smaller than she is. Yazali silently repeats the word _adaar, adaar, adaar_ as the smith fits polished aurum caps around her curling horns, careful not to touch her. They will glint in the sun, and Saaraas will mutter if only _if only_ she’d _stayed_ bare-headed.

  


“Cat feet,” Yazali hisses to the elven servingboy beside her, “If you don’t _want_ to be _caught_ you’ll stop _stomping_.”

“I can’t _help_ it,” he replies, “I–”

“ _Shh!_ ”

She is good at what she does, and cheaper than a bard. The company leader doesn’t mind a little freelancing so long as she’s whole and coherent when she gets back in the morning, so long as she doesn’t work against their interests. Yazali ducks her head in a doorway that’s just one side of too small for a tall human, let alone a grown qunari of _her_ frame.

“This way,” the elf whispers; his voice trembles, and so do his hands.

She knows this about the recipient of her knife: his greatest wrong was seeing what he shouldn’t have, or asking too high a price too many times for his silence. He might be a good man; he might beat his servants. She does not particularly care to find out either way, as he can hardly out-bid her present client.

“I don’t even charge extra for the insult, your grace.”

 _Light feet_.

Yazali pads into the unlit room and lets her eyes adjust. Thick carpet makes her job easier; heavy snores make the wibbling whine from behind her more a nuisance than a danger. He should have _his_ pay cut in half for the trouble he might cause. Her knives are sharp; she slips one into the artery on the right side of the sleeping man’s throat, and withdraws. He gurgles and his blood stains the linens and drips onto the floor.

“Bonjour,” she says, a Nevarran lilt in her Orlesian accent, and, “Au revoir.”

She’ll be paid in gold and insult. She isn’t even sure the man woke up.

“If anyone asks, the last thing he saw was savage bloodlust in my eyes, understand?”

The elf nods, and backs away. Yazali cleans her dagger in the coverlet and leaves as quietly as she’d come.

  


Once she’s paid Yazali meets the others in a tavern dockside; laughing and yelling and drinking some truly nasty things. Easy job, coming up, looming and glaring at priests and mages and soldiers, encouraging them to not get up to trouble. She drinks, perhaps, too much. Her comrades’ footfalls in their shared room in the morning are like thunder, and she groans to hear them.

“Light feet, light feet, _light feet_ , Maker, please, walk _softly_.”


End file.
